‘Fly by Night’ Comes to Playwrights Horizons

From left, the former classmates Michael Mitnick, Kim Rosenstock and Will Connolly, who first staged their musical “Fly by Night” at Yale in 2009. Now it is coming to Playwrights Horizons, starring Adam Chanler-Berat and Allison Case.

Jesse Dittmar for The New York Times

By CHRISTOPHER WALLENBERG

June 5, 2014

When Kim Rosenstock, Michael Mitnick and Will Connolly first staged their musical “Fly by Night” as Yale School of Drama grad students in 2009, it was nothing if not a DIY proposition.

The three did more than write the script and compose the music and lyrics for the show within a matter of months, often brainstorming ideas at their favorite watering hole following a day filled with classes and schoolwork. As artistic director of the Yale Summer Cabaret that year, Ms. Rosenstock ran the theater and managed its kitchen. And while Mr. Connolly acted in the musical, Mr. Mitnick handed out programs and even waited on tables.

“It was all hands on deck,” Ms. Rosenstock said, seated alongside her collaborators on a recent afternoon. “When we finished one thing, whoever was free would take on the next task, whether it was a song, a scene or a lyric. We would just do whatever was needed at the moment.”

The cabaret may have a starry roster of alumni — Meryl Streep once glided across its stage in her classmate Christopher Durang’s “The Marriage of Bette and Boo” — but “what was really cool about the original production is that it was low stakes,” Mr. Mitnick said. “I never had a single idea or aspiration that the show would ever go beyond that.”

Fast-forward five years, though, and that little musical has come a long way from its days of student dinner theater at a 100-seat basement room in downtown New Haven. After appearing in developmental productions at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, Calif., in 2011 and at Dallas Theater Center last spring, “Fly by Night” is now in previews at Playwrights Horizons. The show, which opens on June 11, centers on a dreamy-eyed aspiring singer-songwriter torn between two sisters who seem to be from different galaxies.

For a musical with a time-skipping narrative that wonders about the happenstance hand of fate and the random nature of human connection, “Fly by Night” has come to life through a fittingly serendipitous series of events.

Ms. Rosenstock recalls standing outside the building after each performance during its initial run at Yale and feeling a buzz gathering around the show. “I realized that something special was happening in that theater,” she said. “I remember saying to Michael and Will, ‘I think we made a real show here!’ ”

Still, it came as a total surprise when they got a call the following spring from Meredith McDonough, who was then the director of TheatreWorks’ New Works Festival. “She said, ‘I just read your script, and I want to produce a workshop of it,’ ” Ms. Rosenstock recalled. “My first question was: ‘How? We haven’t sent it out to anyone.’ Even our agents didn’t have ‘Fly by Night.’ ”

Unbeknown to its creators, their Yale playwriting instructor, the Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Paula Vogel, had emailed the script to several theater administrators she knew were scouting for new musicals. “It was a really wonderful, sneaky thing that she did — and behind our backs!” Ms. Rosenstock said with a laugh.

In the show, which climaxes during the Northeast blackout of 1965, the hapless sandwich maker Harold finds his dead mother’s old guitar stashed away in a closet, teaches himself how to play and begins writing songs. With an onstage band performing a ’60s-inspired rock score, the show chronicles the tale of Harold and the two women he falls for: the would-be Broadway star Daphne and her introspective sister, Miriam, an astronomy buff.

Intersecting with the three heartsick souls are Harold’s bereft father, his cantankerous boss Crabble, and Joey Storms, a jittery playwright writing a showcase piece for Daphne. Adam Chanler-Berat, Allison Case and Peter Friedman are among those in the cast.

“It’s a fable about connection and how the little moments in our lives add up to the big moments in our lives,” said Carolyn Cantor, the show’s director.

Adam Chanler-Berat and Allison Case in “Fly by Night.”

Sara Krulwich / The New York Times

“Fly by Night” is also a play that ponders cosmic questions. Miriam muses about how atoms inside every one of us come from stardust and the remnants of the Big Bang. There’s also a fortuneteller who makes an ominous prediction. But in Dallas, the creative team became worried that the show leaned too heavily into the notion that our destinies are written in the stars, which led to some rewrites.

Reviewing the show’s debut in Palo Alto, Dennis Harvey of Variety called it “self-conscious fluff that is sometimes charming.” The show fared better two years later, where the Dallas Morning News critic Lawson Taitte praised it as “hilarious and bittersweet, deeply immersed in tradition but utterly original” and said that it “feels ready for the big time.”

“Fly by Night” is an unusual collaboration, in that its creators do not distinguish among who wrote the book, music and lyrics, since all three have contributed to each. As they continue to write fresh dialogue, lyrics and even new songs, Ms. Cantor observed, the three seem to work as a single organism.

“They will go off by themselves, hash it out, probably scream and yell, then come to some sort of consensus and return with something they’ve written,” Ms. Cantor said. “It may be slower going at times, because there’s not always agreement about the right thing to do in certain situations. But the piece feels like it has a singular voice, in part because they’re each really invested in all three areas.”

In the five years they’ve been toiling on “Fly by Night,” their individual careers have also started to take off.

Ms. Rosenstock, 34, has been on the writing staff for the Fox television series “New Girl” since its first season, and she wrote the warmly received 2010 play “Tigers Be Still.” Mr. Connolly, 29, is a singer-songwriter and performed in the Off Broadway and Broadway productions of “Once.” Mr. Mitnick, 30, has a résumé that includes several plays, the book for the in-development musical “Animal House” and lyrics for the “King Kong” musical that debuted in Australia last year and is aiming for Broadway.

He also has a burgeoning Hollywood career, having written the coming film adaptation of the young-adult novel “The Giver” (starring Ms. Streep and Jeff Bridges). Ben Stiller is reportedly in talks to direct Mr. Mitnick’s screenplay about the battle between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse to light up America.

As they refine and reshape individual scenes and moments in “Fly by Night,” the creators are able to draw on the experiences they’ve accumulated working in show business since graduating from Yale. Ms. Rosenstock said the most helpful skill she’s mastered as a television writer is economy of language.

“I love nothing more than a three-page monologue in a play,” she said. “But now, I’m also really thrilled if I can figure out how to tell the most efficient version of a scene. You only get 21 minutes and 35 seconds to tell a story” on “New Girl,” “so you can’t be precious about everything.”

Both she and Mr. Mitnick said they’ve gotten better at working on a tight timetable. “Sometimes, you’ll be on set, and you have just a few minutes to try to rewrite a scene or tweak something that needs fixing,” she said. “I’ve learned how to dig deep and figure out how to solve something really fast no matter how panicked I am.”

Mr. Connolly, who first joined “Once” during an early developmental workshop, got to watch and learn at the feet of the director John Tiffany, the choreographer Steven Hoggett and their creative team.

What he took away from the process is that “less is more” and to trust the raw material and let it grow naturally — a key to successfully rendering both the delicate love story in “Once” and the romantic triangle at the center of “Fly by Night.”

“Now, being on the other side of the table,” Mr. Connolly said, “I’ve started to realize that there’s a very simple, organic way to let these discoveries blossom — and to recognize when they’re happening and not strangle them or stifle them in any way.”